PALADINS HAPPY TO BE IN THEIR OWN FAVORITE BAND

Whenever Dave Gomez and his band, the Paladins, tour Texas, they stop at a barber shop in a small town just outside Dallas and get their hair cut by a guy named Sid King.

That’s real devotion for you.

Since the band was formed here six years ago, the Paladins (who will perform Saturday night with the King Biscuit Blues Band at the Belly Up in Solana Beach) have stubbornly stuck with playing vintage 1950s rockabilly, relentlessly touring the country--mostly the Southwest--more than 10 months of the year.

One of their most popular live numbers has consistently been “Let ‘er Roll,” a gut-slamming rockabilly classic originally recorded by Sid King and the Five Strings.

That was back in 1956--long before King became a barber, and before any of the three Paladins were even born.

“We live, eat, breathe and sleep our music,” said Gomez, 24. “Rockabilly and the blues is pure, truthful music. It’s the real roots of rock ‘n’ roll; it’s the stripped-down, bare-naked sound that everybody who’s popular today borrowed from.

“And to us, it’s as important as the roots of our own families.”

Gomez and his band are quite serious, indeed, about the roots of rock ‘n’ roll.

When the rockabilly revival hit the United States and England in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, hundreds of bands hopped on the hay wagon.

Groups like the Stray Cats and the Blasters got plenty of critical acclaim--and chart success--by faithfully reproducing the hybrid of blues and country that eventually evolved into rock ‘n’ roll.

They played a mix of originals and copy versions of rockabilly standards by the likes of George Jones, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.

The sound was always the same: the twanging lead guitar, the slapping string bass, the abundance of echo and the yelps, gulps, stutters and hiccups of the lead vocalist.

As most musical fads do, the rockabilly revival faded quickly. By 1984, nearly all the rockabilly bands had either broken up or adopted a more contemporary sound that is now being ballyhooed in rock circles as “American roots” music.

Not the Paladins. While everyone else was giving up, the Paladins not only continued to play rockabilly but also began paying even more homage to their roots by lacing their sound with the bittersweet fragrance of Mississippi blues.

“All the bands, with the exception of the Blasters, that started out with a pretty raw sound have become very commercial,” Gomez said.

“And even though their music is called ‘American roots,’ they’ve actually drifted away from those very roots--the old-style country, blues and rockabilly of the 1950s that we’re as intent as ever on preserving.”

To the Paladins, the task of preserving the roots of rock ‘n’ roll goes a lot further than simply re-creating the music.

All three--Gomez, bassist Tom Yearsley and drummer Scott Campbell--sport greased-back ducktails and play instruments that date back three decades or more.

“The look, the sound we get from the old instruments and amplifiers, is as important to us as the songs,” Gomez said. “Everything today is too technical, too advanced, to really achieve the kind of sound, the kind of feel, we’re after.”

Gomez admits that the Paladins’ unwillingness to compromise their style may cost them a chance at commercial success. Aside from a pair of contributions to small-label compilation albums and a self-released single, they have yet to win a national recording contract, unlike such popular “American roots” groups as Los Lobos and the Beat Farmers, the latter also from San Diego.

Not that they haven’t tried. Earlier this year, the Paladins went to Austin, Texas, to record an eight-song demonstration tape at Arlyn Studios, which is owned by Willie Nelson. The tape was produced by Kim Wilson of the Fabulous Thunderbirds, another real “roots” group dedicated to preserving the Mississippi Delta blues of Howlin’ Wolf and T-Bone Walker.

Guest musicians on the tape include Wilson, legendary “Swamp Boogie Queen” Katie Webster, and noted blues guitarist Anson Funderburgh.

But after six months of shopping the tape around to “just about every record company in the country,” Gomez said, there have been no takers.

Gomez insists it really doesn’t matter.

“As long as we’re working, I’m satisfied,” he said. “All over the country, especially in Texas, we’ve found so many cool people who really dig what we’re doing.

“And as long as we can find work, as long as we can be on the road and play the kind of music we really believe in, we’re happy.

“Our motto is, ‘We’re all in our favorite band,’ and if we have to sell out to get a (record) deal, we’re simply not interested.”